Trying to be frugal

Being a stay at home mum is one of the best jobs ever. I wouldn't give up the quality time I have with Sophia for anything. However, realistically it means that less money is coming in to the household that before I had a baby (I won't even bother to try to figure out the child care versus my wages calculation, cos that wasn't a route we wanted to go down).

I've always been a bit of a saver. If I was given money for birthdays or Christmas I would often end up paying money into my savings account and then forgetting about it. Of course this has come in handy now that I'm a married adult who needed to find money for things like deposits for landlords etc. I loved to read household tips books growing up and one of my favourite books to dip into was 'More with Less'. (I can't find a good link for that, but it's a book by a lady called Doris Longacre sharing thoughts and ideas from herself and others about living in a way that better stewards the resources God has given us). Nowadays I'm also into frugal blogs. Some of my current favourites include Frugal Hacks, The Path to Frugality, The Common Room, and The Simple Dollar.

I've been making stock now and then for ages - my mum does it, and so I do too, but a post on The Simple Dollar inspired me to be more intentional about it. He (Trent) posts about how they have bags (or it might have been boxes, I use bags) in the freezer and any time they have bones or leftover vegetable peelings or scraps, they toss them into these bags and freeze them. Every once in a while, when the bags are full, they crank up the crock pot, toss them in with some bits and pieces, and the result is delicious and nutritious stock. That's just a quick summary, so go over and read the original post 'Turning kitchen waste into something sublime'.